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ANSWERING CAF: THE SSPX REDUX THREAD

I'll be quoting from the CAF thread: SSPX Update - Redux which is over 800 posts as I type this. But first, my own status. Before I was banned for a week I had actually exited the thread. However, the post in which I did that has been removed. However, the post I responded to, is still there:

What's really semi-creepy about how they do this is, my post quoted in the above image that he is responding to, has been deleted, along with my reply to his post for which I was not n banned. In my post, I simply said "You're right. I'll leave you to it." And left the thread. When I got up this morning, my posts were gone and my infraction in place. (That story here on my blog.) I point this out for the sake of full disclosure.

THE MOST SENSIBLE POST IN THE THREAD (#628):

Was actually made by a poster named Mike 30 and I'll quote it in it's entirety:

Hey I've got an idea. Why Don't all of us, who by the way have absolutely no stake in the situation simply back out,stop with the self serving and usually catty comments they need to tale their shoes off and come inside, too many flies and cold air coming in give me a break, and simply wait for what the Vatican and the society figure out. Whatever happens is their business. Not ours. I doubt there are any SSPX. Priests or Bishops here and I know there is no one who represents the Magisterium or the Holy Father either just give it a rest.

Mike figured it out first. Bravo, Mike.

Anyone who wades through the thread will find a lot of great data about the present status of the SSPX (priestly faculties suspended - laity may go to an SSPX Mass only if there is no other possible alternative) and will see various quotes and links that give more information. I'll be posting some of this in later posts ITT.

But for right now - what's the problem with discussing the SSPX? I'm not going to pretend to be impartial or respectful or any of that jazz. I don't have a bit of respect for any group that is very obviously trying to undermine the Church by attacking the authority of the Pope or redefining the Papacy in what are a variety of international Internet sites, with proselytizers in forums and comboxes worldwide.

The conversations only give these people a public pulpit from which to bash the Pope again and again and try to convince those ill-equipped to judge the content, to abandon their obedience to the Holy Father.

Most of the people in the thread who are defending at various levels the SSPX as well-meaning if misguided have no real agendas except to express their own opinion. Their opinions make sense considering the amount of information they have.

Nor is it necessarily that CAF is picking a "side" by giving me a nan (again, see the blog post from the link above, I was probably getting infracted one way or another and went into my posts with my eyes wide open to the possibility and am not complaining one bit) as they seem to have also erased one of numealinesimpet's posts (although his deleted post in pretty much intact in Dee S response post #486 in which he criticizes a Bishop who wrote that the Chruch will not reject someone for simply not following her teachings.

Unfortunately, later, the poster seems to be given free rein to make his argument that the Pope can't actually tell us what to do.

But while all the is spinning and manipulating and debating and obfuscation is going on, there are people getting hurt. And two heart-rending posts by member DeeS really point this out.

In post #520, Dee courageously answers a question I asked her as she is a former SSPX attendee, where she eloquently presents the dilemma of the lay person longing for the Liturgy of their Church life, and describes how the rhetoric of the SSPX essentially poisoned her mind and view of her Church.

BUT - in post #522 she goes on to describe her sad reaction to what she experienced as the coldly callous rejection of the pleas made to the Bishop to help people resist the SSPX by providing the EF at least once in a while. I'm going to quote it extensively here:

The issue going back many years for those of us who wanted the Tridentine Mass in union with Rome, was that no matter how or who approached the local archdiocese, there was never any desire on their part to fulfil this request. This attitude continued and as I can see here (I stand corrected) was reinfoced by this encyclical, i.e. not being in any way interested in helping anyone still in the SSPX.

I can see the point, intellectually that is, but how then can one escape from the SSPX position without a lifeboat to do so? There are many people, as I said in my previous post, that would have jumped ship if there was an alternative. Catch 22 I even went to see the bishop to plead for those like myself, who did not like being where we were but that could not endure being thrown in the deep end of a local parish without the Tridentine Mass we so loved. No sympathy there and no hope of ever having that mass as he did not have any priest who could remember the rubrics.

Bearing in mind, that the lay person does not really have enough knowledge or understanding of the true position they are in (as stated below in 19) and are really, i think, being caught in the cross-fire as Rome spends the last 40 years unsuccessfully trying to bring the SSPX back into the fold, while the punishments by and large, fall to the layman. A bit hard on the lay people, don't you think? Reminds me of the words of Cardinal Newman:

"What is the province of the laity? To hunt, to shoot, to entertain," (1) wrote Monsignor George Talbot in protest at the position John Henry Newman had expressed in his article On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine,which was published in the Rambler in July, 1859

Talbot's conception of the laity has since been caricatured in the remark that the laity are in the Church to "pray up, pay up and shut up!" The nub of Talbot's anxiety was plain: "if a check not be placed on the laity in England they will be the rulers of the Catholic Church instead of the Holy See and the Episcopate". (3)Even Bishop Ullathorne, Newman's Ordinary, could ask, "Who are the laity?" As Newman noted, "I answered (not in these words) that the Church would look foolish without them".http://www.ewtn.com/library/Theology/NEWMNLAY.HTM

So it's a story as old as human culture: a struggle for power among the princes while individuals suffer because of it. Everyone is trying to draft the laity, while all we want is peace and some token of care from those who have dared to call themselves pastor.

I have an actually conclusion here which is: we should not allow these debate threads. We should not allow this any more room in our minds and spirits and hearts than it already has.

However, if anyone wishes to tell their SSPX story, to voice an opinion, to vent a frustration, they are certainly welcome. But I am not an uninterested party. No one who undermines the Church or attacks the vulnerable is welcome here.

As "my" last comment here, in order to support why I thought Mike 30 made the most sensible post in the thread, I am including the complete text of a post made by the redoubtable JReducation (#651)

Many of us see some of the issues that concern the SSPX. However, as Pope Paul VI and Archbishop DiNoia have said, the problem is aggravated when the authorities of the SSPX speak to Rome as if they have a mission to correct problems outside of the SSPX. The truth is that the people responsible for dealing with these problems are the pope and his dicasteries along with the college of bishops. No one institute, religious or of apostolic life has been assigned to do this and it would not be appropriate to do so. That would be abdicating responsibility.

When an institute assumes the authority to denounce and correct everyone else, there is a positive and a negative. The positive is that if you denounce or report things to the proper authorities, it’s helpful. Bishops and pope are not seers, not most of them. They don’t know every detail that happens around them and much less miles away.

However, when you publicly correct others who are your equals or even your superiors, that’s a problem. The message there is that you’re taking charge. That steps on a lot of toes, which is the first negative. The second negative is that others are wondering why they have to explain themselves to you or submit to your evaluation of them and their activities. When this happens, the point that you were addressing gets lost in the process. Now, people are focusing on your audacity rather than on the problem that you started to address.

According to Bishop Fellay, one of the requirements that the Vatican makes for regularization is that the SSPX not comment to the laity or the media and that it stop correcting others. If I understood Bishop Fellay correctly, he said that they could not comply with this, along with several other things.

In can see two sides here. This is common. It’s not Vatican vs SSPX problem. On the one hand, people believe that you should bring things out into the open, deal with it and move along. On the other hand, the problem is that rarely does it happen that way. When things are made too public, everyone takes their turn at giving it a spin. Then you spend the next century responding to the spins. It makes sense not to make public comments and discuss concerns privately.